Things to do at the Vatican

The Vatican City lies in the heart of Rome, but technically it is not part of Italy at all. This walled enclave on the western bank of the Tiber covers just 0.49 square kilometres and counts as the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population. Around 800 people live inside the walls full time, including the Pope, the Cardinals of the Roman Curia, the Swiss Guards and a small number of clergy and lay workers. Despite its tiny footprint, the Vatican holds one of the richest concentrations of art, architecture and history on the planet, and the experience of walking through its museums and basilica leaves a deep impression on every visitor, religious or not.

What Makes the Vatican Independent

The independence of the Vatican from Italy is far more than a cosmetic gesture. The state was officially established under the Lateran Treaty of 1929 between the Holy See and the Italian government of the time, ending almost six decades of dispute that began when the unified Kingdom of Italy seized the Papal States in 1870. Since 1929 the Vatican has functioned as an absolute elective monarchy, with the Pope as head of state and supreme executive, legislative and judicial authority.

The Vatican has its own diplomatic corps, recognised by 183 countries around the world, and issues its own passports, stamps and euro coins. The famous Pontifical Swiss Guard, founded in 1506 and recognisable by their distinctive blue, red, orange and yellow Renaissance uniforms, are the official army of the Vatican and provide ceremonial and personal protection for the Pope. The corps is recruited only from Catholic Swiss citizens with prior military training, and the ranks of around 135 guards make it one of the smallest standing armies in the world. Despite the colourful clothing, these are highly trained professional soldiers.

The state also runs its own railway station (with one of the shortest international rail lines in the world), its own pharmacy, a heliport, the Vatican Bank, the historic Vatican Library, the Vatican Apostolic Archive, the famous Vatican Observatory, the daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano and Vatican Radio, which broadcasts in around 40 languages worldwide.

The Pope and Public Audiences

The Vatican is the official residence of the Pope and the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church. Since 2013 the head of the Church has been Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first member of the Jesuit order to hold the office. From here he leads weekly events open to the faithful and to ordinary visitors of any background.

The two main public events are:

• The General Audience. Held every Wednesday morning at around 9:00 in winter and 10:00 in summer, either in St. Peter’s Square (when the weather allows) or inside the modern Paul VI Audience Hall. The Pope greets the crowds, gives a short catechism in several languages and offers a blessing. Tickets are free but must be requested in advance through the Prefecture of the Papal Household. The earlier you request, the better, since capacity is limited and demand from pilgrim groups is enormous.
• The Sunday Angelus. Every Sunday at noon, the Pope appears at the window of the Apostolic Palace overlooking St. Peter’s Square, offers a brief reflection on the gospel reading of the day and blesses the crowd. No tickets are required.

You do not need to be Catholic to attend either event, and visitors of every faith and none are welcome. Major religious holidays such as Christmas, Easter and the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul on 29 June bring even larger ceremonies, including the famous Christmas Eve and Easter Sunday Masses celebrated by the Pope himself.

St. Peter’s Square

The main square at the heart of the Vatican is named after Saint Peter, the apostle whom Catholics believe was the first Bishop of Rome and who is supposedly buried directly beneath the high altar of the basilica. St. Peter’s Square (Piazza San Pietro) was designed by the brilliant Baroque sculptor and architect Gian Lorenzo Bernini between 1656 and 1667 and remains one of his greatest achievements.

The famous oval colonnade that frames the square holds 284 travertine columns arranged in four parallel rows, topped by 140 statues of saints. Bernini designed the colonnade to symbolise the welcoming arms of the Catholic Church embracing the world. At the centre of the square stands an Egyptian obelisk brought to Rome by the emperor Caligula in 37 AD, originally erected at the Temple of the Sun in Heliopolis more than 4,000 years ago. Two beautiful fountains by Bernini and Maderno flank the obelisk on either side.

St. Peter’s Square is the natural starting point of any visit to the Vatican. From here you can approach St. Peter’s Basilica directly across the square and reach the entrance to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel by walking around the city walls to the north.

St. Peter’s Basilica

St. Peter’s Basilica is the largest church in the world and one of the holiest sites in Christianity. The current building was constructed between 1506 and 1626 on the site of an earlier 4th-century basilica built by the Emperor Constantine over what was believed to be the tomb of Saint Peter. Some of the greatest names of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque worked on the design over its 120-year construction, including Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Carlo Maderno and Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

The interior is overwhelming. The nave stretches 218 metres in length, the central dome rises 136 metres above the altar and the entire space is covered in marble, gold leaf, mosaics and monumental sculpture. The most important works to see inside the basilica:

• Michelangelo’s Pieta. The famous marble sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Christ, carved by Michelangelo in 1499 when he was just 23 years old. The Pieta sits in the first chapel on the right as you enter and is now protected behind bulletproof glass after a vandal attacked it in 1972.
• Bernini’s Baldachin. The towering 29-metre bronze canopy that stands directly above the high altar and the tomb of Saint Peter. Bernini cast the spiral columns from bronze stripped from the Pantheon roof.
• The Statue of Saint Peter. A 13th-century bronze statue of Peter holding the keys to heaven, with the right foot worn smooth by centuries of pilgrims kissing or touching it.
• The Tomb of Saint Peter. Beneath the high altar lies the small ancient shrine that has marked the apostle’s burial place since the earliest centuries of Christianity. Bones discovered in the 20th century are believed by the Vatican to belong to Peter himself.
• The Papal Tombs. Around 91 popes are buried inside the basilica or in the underground Vatican Grottoes, including Saint John Paul II, whose tomb has become one of the most visited sites in the building.

Climbing the dome is one of the highlights of any visit to Rome. You can take an elevator to the roof level and then walk the final 320 steps up the inside of the dome to the open viewing platform at the top, with sweeping views over St. Peter’s Square, the Vatican Gardens, the Tiber and the historic centre of Rome stretching to the horizon.

Entry to the basilica itself is free, but security checks at the entrance can mean queues that stretch for over an hour during peak hours. Modest dress is mandatory: no bare shoulders, no short skirts and no shorts above the knee. Bring a light scarf as a backup if you plan to visit in summer.

The Vatican Museums

The Vatican Museums (Musei Vaticani) hold one of the largest and most important art collections on the planet, built up by the popes over the past five centuries and now spread across more than 70 galleries inside the Apostolic Palace. The collection includes around 70,000 works of art, of which roughly 20,000 are on display at any given time. A typical visit covers several kilometres of corridors and galleries and ends at the famous Sistine Chapel.

The most important sections to look out for:

• The Raphael Rooms (Stanze di Raffaello). Four rooms decorated by Raphael and his workshop between 1508 and 1524, originally serving as the private apartments of Pope Julius II. The famous fresco The School of Athens, with its imagined gathering of the great philosophers of antiquity, ranks among the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance.
• The Gallery of Maps. A 120-metre-long corridor lined with 40 hand-painted maps of the regions of Italy, commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII in 1580 and considered one of the most beautiful corridors in the world.
• The Gallery of Tapestries. A long hall hung with Flemish tapestries woven from designs by the students of Raphael, including the famous Resurrection of Christ tapestry that creates a spectacular optical illusion as you walk past.
• The Pio-Clementino Museum. A vast collection of Greek and Roman sculpture, including the legendary Laocoon and His Sons, the Belvedere Apollo and the Belvedere Torso, which famously inspired Michelangelo’s figures in the Sistine Chapel.
• The Egyptian Museum. Mummies, sarcophagi, statues and small artefacts gathered by the popes over centuries.
• The Etruscan Museum. Pre-Roman artefacts from the ancient Etruscan civilisation of central Italy.
• The Pinacoteca (Picture Gallery). Paintings by Giotto, Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Caravaggio and many others, arranged chronologically across 18 rooms.
• The Modern Religious Art Collection. Works by Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, donated to the Vatican as expressions of modern Christian art.

The Sistine Chapel

The visit to the Vatican Museums culminates in the legendary Sistine Chapel (Cappella Sistina), the private chapel of the popes and the place where the College of Cardinals gathers in conclave to elect a new pope. Built between 1473 and 1481 under Pope Sixtus IV (who gave the chapel its name), the chapel became famous for the extraordinary frescoes that cover its walls and ceiling.

The ceiling, painted by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512 on the personal commission of Pope Julius II, is one of the most influential works of art ever created. The 500 square metres of fresco depict scenes from the Book of Genesis, with the famous panel of The Creation of Adam at the centre. Decades later, between 1536 and 1541, Michelangelo returned to paint The Last Judgement on the altar wall, a swirling vision of the second coming of Christ that still stops visitors in their tracks. The side walls of the chapel hold equally important frescoes by other Renaissance masters including Botticelli, Perugino, Ghirlandaio, Rosselli and Signorelli, painted between 1481 and 1483.

Photography is strictly forbidden inside the Sistine Chapel, and security guards regularly remind visitors to stay silent out of respect for the sacred space. The chapel is small, the crowds are large, and the experience is more rewarding if you visit early in the morning, late in the afternoon or on one of the special evening openings during the summer months.

Other Vatican Sights Worth Knowing About

The Vatican Gardens

Around half of the entire Vatican City is taken up by the beautiful Vatican Gardens, a quiet green space of formal hedges, fountains, woodlands and historic buildings used as a private retreat by the popes since the 13th century. The gardens can only be visited on guided tours booked in advance through the official Vatican Museums website.

Castel Sant’Angelo and the Passetto di Borgo

Although technically inside Italian territory, the cylindrical fortress of Castel Sant’Angelo, on the western bank of the Tiber, is closely linked to the Vatican by a secret elevated passageway called the Passetto di Borgo. The passage allowed several popes to escape during attacks on Rome, most famously Pope Clement VII during the brutal Sack of Rome in 1527.

The Necropolis Under St. Peter’s

One of the most extraordinary experiences in the Vatican is the Scavi Tour, a guided archaeological visit to the ancient Roman necropolis discovered beneath the basilica in the 1940s. The tour brings small groups down to the underground street of Roman tombs and ends at the small shrine that marks the traditional burial place of Saint Peter. Tickets must be requested several months in advance through the Excavations Office (Ufficio Scavi), and only a small number of visitors are allowed each day.

Architecture and Art Across the Centuries

The Vatican holds some of the finest art and architecture in Italy, in part because of the patronage of the Renaissance popes who were able to attract the greatest artists of their time to work for the Holy See. Bramante, Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini and dozens of other masters spent years of their lives inside these walls. The Vatican also predates the Renaissance by more than a thousand years, and examples of earlier and later styles can be seen everywhere on the site, from the early Christian foundations beneath the basilica to the Baroque masterpieces of the 17th century, the Neoclassical buildings of the 18th and the modern works donated to the popes in the 20th and 21st centuries. Few places in the world cover such a long stretch of art history in such a small area.

How to Visit the Vatican

• Book tickets online in advance. The Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel sell out weeks ahead during the peak season. Book through the official Musei Vaticani website to skip the worst of the queue.
• Choose the right time of day. Early morning entries (before 9:00) and the late afternoon timeslots are far less crowded than the middle of the day. The museums also offer special evening openings on Friday nights from late spring through autumn, with much smaller crowds and a beautiful atmosphere.
• Consider a guided tour. Authorised tour companies offer skip-the-line entry, expert guides and small-group experiences that bring the art history to life. Look for groups of no more than 10 to 15 people.
• Combine the basilica with the museums carefully. The two entrances are on opposite sides of the Vatican walls. The most efficient route is to start with the museums and Sistine Chapel in the morning, then walk around to St. Peter’s Square and visit the basilica afterwards.
• Free entry days. The Vatican Museums are free on the last Sunday of every month, but the queues are extreme and the experience is far less rewarding than a normal day with a timed ticket.
• Dress modestly. Cover shoulders and knees throughout the Vatican, including the museums, the Sistine Chapel and the basilica.
• No large bags. Backpacks and large bags must be checked at the cloakroom.
• Allow enough time. A proper visit to the Vatican Museums takes at least three hours, and the basilica needs another hour or two on top of that.
• Tickets to see the Pope. Request tickets to the Wednesday General Audience through the Prefecture of the Papal Household by post, email or in person at the bronze doors next to St. Peter’s Square. Tickets are free.

Getting to the Vatican

The Vatican lies on the western bank of the Tiber, just a 25-minute walk from the historic centre of Rome. The closest metro stop is Ottaviano on Line A, about a 5-minute walk from the entrance to the Vatican Museums. Several bus and tram lines also stop nearby, and the Roma San Pietro railway station handles regional trains from the surrounding Lazio region. Avoid driving and parking near the Vatican, since the area is heavily restricted.

Final Thoughts

The Vatican packs more art, history and spiritual significance into half a square kilometre than almost any other place on Earth. Stand at the centre of Bernini’s colonnade as the bells of the basilica ring, walk slowly past the school of Athens in the Raphael Rooms, look up in silence at Michelangelo’s ceiling in the Sistine Chapel and climb the dome of St. Peter’s at sunset for a view of Rome that has barely changed in centuries. Whether you come as a pilgrim, an art lover, a history student or a curious traveller, the smallest country in the world will leave you with memories that last a lifetime.